The IAU XXIX General Assembly is underway and the IAU Women in Astronomy Working Group and the Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy have organized several excellent events for our community. A few events are already behind us, but today features:

[Today's guest blogger is Maura McLaughlin. Maura has been a Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at West Virginia University since 2006. She received her PhD from Cornell University in 2001 and did postdoctoral research at the University of Manchester's Jodrell Bank Observatory for five years before coming to WVU. She is a Cottrell Scholar, a Sloan Fellow, and serves as Co-Director of a recently awarded NSF Physics Frontiers Center.]

I've been dealing with sexual harassment via phone calls and email by an astronomer, and I believe this originated with a colloquium that I gave in the spring. The harassment continued for months, culminating in me reporting it to his university, but no evidence was found and the case was dismissed. I remain incredibly frustrated, and also scared, and hope that by writing this post I might identify others who are victims of harassment by this same person. I have provided a lot of detail in this post, as I think it will be helpful, but have not included the name of the university or astronomer who I believe is responsible, as I know these allegations carry serious repercussions.

[Today marks our 1000th blog post on the Women-in-Astronomy (WiA) blog. I thought I'd use this post to talk about some of the blog's history and where I see our future. Former Bloggers-in-Chief Hannah Jang-Condell and Laura Trouille as well as CSWA chair Joan Schmelz also contributed to this piece.]

This blog was started in 2008 by former CSWA member Hannah Jang-Condell in an effort to reach out to a younger, more socially networked audience. While the CSWA already had a weekly newsletter (AASWOMEN) and a quarterly magazine (Status: A Report on Women in Astronomy), Hannah felt that more informal, shorter posts, would engage a different audience.

Back to top.4. Building up the pipeline: Engaging Men, Advancing WomenFrom: Nicole T. Ranger via APS Women in Physics

by Effenus Henderson

Earlier this week I served as an observer and commenter along with Tammy Young, Vice President of Human Resources for Alaska Airlines at a forward-looking forum focused on how men can become better allies for helping build a more diverse and inclusive pipeline that reflects the growing demographic changes.

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The Forum on Engaging Men, Advancing Women, convenes city-based sessions of 100 – 200 executives – women and men – who lead with gender savvy. Fashioned as a workshop, the Forum focuses on how male leaders can co-create opportunities with women at work, and it equips all to lead inclusively through relationships of reciprocity (a situation or relationship in which two people or groups agree to do something similar for each other, to allow each other to have the same rights, etc.).

Back to top.5. Women in science and engineering seek their own version of 'MacGyver' on TVFrom: Daryl Haggard [dhaggard_at_amherst.edu]

By Paresh Dave

With an insane ability to turn random things like wine and lamp cords into tools, "MacGyver" inspired a generation of men to become tinkerers.

Now, it just might be Mimi's turn to spark a generation of women.

Beth Keser, a principal engineer at Qualcomm in San Diego, sure hopes so. Keser was among five winners selected this week by a coalition that's trying to get a female version of "MacGyver" on TV in hopes of boosting the number of women who pursue science and engineering careers. The National Academy of Engineering, USC Viterbi School of Engineering and a couple of other groups put on the competition.

UNESCO has just launched a global project targeted at the gender gap in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects. The initiative, known as SAGA (STEM and Gender Advancement), will address the lack of data on women in STEM — a dearth that restricts the design and monitoring of policies to address gender equality. By developing new indicators and methods to measure and assess sex-disaggregated data on women’s participation and the barriers they face, SAGA hopes to help reduce the gender gap at all levels of education and research.

The launch comes a few months after a Washington Post article revived debates about ‘zombie statistics’ on women, agriculture, labour and land ownership, such as “women produce 60 to 80 per cent of the world’s food”. Such figures are kept alive by continual referencing in research papers and interviews on the subject, and are even used as the basis for funding requests or policy decisions — but, on closer inspection, no one knows where they come from. Like zombies, this dubious data refuses to die.

Back to top.7. Resources for Teachers and Students Make a Difference in STEMFrom: Daryl Haggard [dhaggard_at_amherst.edu]

by Sara Clarke

Emma Ling is living proof that science teachers who offer extra credit for attending workshops and science fairs are onto something.

Ling, an incoming senior at La Costa Canyon High School in Carlsbad, California, spoke about summer science camps, one-day workshops and other opportunities through organizations such as BeWiSE (Better Education for Women in Science and Engineering), a program through the San Diego Science Alliance that engages young women in STEM learning experiences, and the Youth Space Institute.

Back to top.8. Interview with Millie Dresselhaus, the Queen of CarbonFrom: Daryl Haggard [dhaggard_at_amherst.edu]

by John Timmer

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The interview subject in this case is Millie Dresselhaus, Institute Professor at MIT (and the first woman ever so honored). The occasion was her receiving the IEEE Medal of Honor (again, the first female recipient), but a look at her Wikipedia biography shows that awards are nothing new for Dresselhaus. Highlights of a long list include the National Medal of Science and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and her Kavli Prize in Nanoscience was the only Kavli awarded to a single recipient, an indication of how pioneering her research has been.